Quantifying Impact – Case Study

Case Study 1 – Quantifying an improvement opportunity to better support children and young people with ASD

The example outlined below demonstrates the method used by a city council to quantify a potential improvement opportunity. Through the diagnostic, this local authority identified an opportunity to better support staff in mainstream provision to create a more inclusive environment for children and young people with ASD. They designed a workstream to improve this, with an approach focused on collating and communicating best practice among their mainstream secondary schools. Their aim was to encourage speech and language therapists to take on designated SENCo positions, as well as publicise training opportunities for education practitioners.

Alongside this workstream, the local authority had compiled vast amounts of data through various other diagnostic activities:

• Benchmarking analysis identified that this local authority was supporting 10% fewer EHCPs in mainstream settings than their statistical neighbours and the national average.
• A multi-disciplinary team found that 40% of children and young people in maintained specialist settings could have achieved a better outcome through mainstream provision if inclusivity for ASD need was improved.
• Deep dive analysis identified that only 2% of transitions into MSS came from resource bases or units, suggesting opportunity for a more graduated approach. 

Given the evidence outlined, they felt it would be realistic to more effectively support children and young people in mainstream settings with the introduction of the workstream mentioned above. This includes considering factors about whether the change would be successfully implemented such as understanding 'readiness for change' to ensure the foundations are in place to effectively manage a change.

Assumptions were also agreed regarding the realistic timeframe in which that change could be implemented. This enabled them to build a profile over time of the number of children and young people the local authority could expect to see better supported in mainstream. To quantify the financial impact of this change, there were three key variables to consider:

1. Number of children in each provision,
2. Average cost of each provision, 
3. Average duration of an EHCP in each provision.

Given that this was not the only improvement opportunity valued by the local authority, it was important for them to consider, in each case, the variables that will be changing and the variables that will remain fixed.

To replicate this method yourself, a key consideration to make is whether this change will only be focused on affecting new starts (i.e. children yet to receive a decision on their support) or whether it will affect the entire caseload (i.e. all children in existing provision). 

It is also worth noting that improvement opportunities will not always impact finances positively as the scale of the impact can vary depending on the difference in average cost between provision.